Military Balance 2010

Internat'l Institute for Strategic Studies - the world's leading polititary conflict cats unleashed their annual "Military Balance " the annual assessment of the military capabilities and defence economics of 170 countries world-wide.

Essential in security, policymaking, analysis and research, Military Balance 2010 is fully crunk with region-by-region analysis of the major military and economic developments affecting defence and security policies and the trade in weapons and other military equipment.

Comprehensive tables detail major military training activities, UN and non-UN deployments, and give data on key equipment holdings and defence economics, as well as defence-expenditure trends over a ten-year period.

2010 Chart of Conflict, a wallchart showing current conflicts around the world, with selected supporting tables come with each copy. Sweet!

This year’s Military Balance examines key issues including the conflict in Afghanistan; the development of Iraq’s security forces; the debate over NATO’s strategic concept and operations in Afghanistan; an update on EU military operations; the progress of reforms in the Russian armed forces; military developments in Africa, including conflicts and the progress of the African Standby Force initiative; and developments in China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Hot factoid gossip about wider defence developments in East Asia and Australasia; South and Central Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Europa (Old and New); the Middle East and North Africa; and North America.

"Growing consensus that future state on state conflict may be characterised by the use of so-called asymmetric techniques. Chief among these may be the use of cyber-warfare to disable a country’s infrastructure, meddle with the integrity of another country’s internal military data, try to confuse its financial transactions or to accomplish any number of other possibly crippling aims.

"Despite evidence of cyber attacks in recent political conflicts, there is little appreciation internationally of how properly to assess cyber-conflict.

"We are now, in relation to the problem of cyber-warfare, at the same stage of intellectual development as we were in the 1950s in relation to possible nuclear war.

"In conclusion, The Military Balance 2010, describes a world in which many countries still perceive external threats from both states and non-state actors and are modernising their militaries accordingly.

"Western militaries have to judge against the recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan whether they need to prepare more for ‘war among the people’, or whether they can safely abstain from such conflicts in the future. Early indications are that the priority will be to focus on capabilities that are ‘adaptable’ to different types of conflict.

"The gruelling experience of recent Western military interventionism suggests that as the operations in Iraq and eventually Afghanistan wind down, definitions of so-called ‘wars of choice’ will become wider, and definitions of ‘wars of necessity’ even narrower. For military planners, the hope must be that the outside world and politicians permit the time for armed forces to reconstitute themselves, and develop doctrines to fight the kinds of conflicts that are thought both strategically necessary and benefit from public support.

"In the meantime, updating the concepts of deterrence and containment to make them applicable to current and prospective conflicts and styles of warfare will be an important duty for strategists"

Pic "Military Balance"